The Experience

Coopershill is out of this world. The long drive winds through beautiful parkland to award-winning, eco-friendly formal gardens where a muster of peacocks roams resplendent. The house is one of the most handsome and distinguished examples of Irish Georgian. Despite these fine looks, the welcome couldn’t be warmer: this is a well-loved home buzzing with activity, not a grand hotel. Simon and Alice the spaniel greet you with friendly smiles before inviting you into the awesome stone-floored hall. Pause a moment and look up at the flags, the stags, the marble figurines, the old parchment map of Ireland. That’s just the hall! There are ancestors, antlers and antiques everywhere, fresh flowers and a chaise longue in every room, amazing high old beds with oh-so-fitting sheets, blankets and eiderdowns. Top-floor bedrooms look over copper beech and croquet lawn to the River Unsin and the four-poster room with huge corner windows is stunning. Great bathrooms, too: the 1900s canopied bath in its green-tiled grotto will knock your socks off.